Rami Ungar The Writer

I spent this afternoon hanging out with a friend I’d hardly seen since graduation, mostly because he’d spent a year in Israel interning at a television network. Turns out that while I’d been busy, so had my friend: not only had he been interning in Israel, but he’d also done some pretty amazing things. My friend’s a whiz when it comes to doing special effects with computers, and he’d done some special effects work for the B-grade horror film Smiley and for the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers video. Yes, he did that.

But that’s not all; apparently my friend’s family owns some properties around Columbus’s Old Towne East neighborhood, a historic neighborhood that had in recent years had fallen into disuse and decay. His family has been buying up properties however, and they’ve been working to renovate many of the buildings, upping the value of the other buildings and making them useful once more. This has brought a steady stream of people back to the neighborhood and even helped bring some money into the neighborhood (if you’ve been in that neighborhood and have been to Yellow Brick Pizza, you can see why). My friend even showed me a few properties, like one that’s in the middle of its renovation and another that hasn’t been renovated yet (the latter looks like a location for a paranormal exploration team’s lockdown at the moment). It was pretty interesting, and I was happy that my friend was contributing to the community. In fact, he told me that several times the people in the neighborhood have called the police when they think a building’s been broken into, just because they don’t want anything to happen to the properties my friend’s renovating with his family.

I have to say, it’s pretty interesting to see what he’s been up to lately, and I was happy to hang out with him.

Not only that, but he gave me some great tips on how to promote my writing, particularly my books when they come out (hopefully soon). I’m definitely going to have to use those tips, especially since they came from a guy who’s made a few successes doing his promotion through YouTube and whatever. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.